formulary

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A book or other collection of stated and fixed forms, such as prayers.

n. A statement expressed in formulas.

n. A fixed form or pattern; a formula.

n. A book containing a list of pharmaceutical substances along with their formulas, uses, and methods of preparation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A pharmacopoeia or list of available drugs, particularly prescription drugs

n. A list of drugs, created by health insurers, hospitals, or prescription drug plans, that defines how costs for any drug are shared between patient and health care provider, typically broken down by tiers such as preferred generics with lowest copay, or preferred brand with higher copay, or non-preferred brand and not covered tiers with the highest cost to the patient.

n. An ancient or medieval collection of models for official writings.

n. A collection of formulas in sciences and mathematics.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

adj. Stated; prescribed; ritual.

n. A book containing stated and prescribed forms, as of oaths, declarations, prayers, medical formulaæ, etc.; a book of precedents.

n. Prescribed form or model; formula.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Of the nature of a formula or formal statement; stated precisely, or according to certain forms; also, explicitly prescribed; ritual.

Closely adhering to formulas or rules; formal.

n. A prescribed form or model; a formula.

n. A collection or system of set forms; especially, a book containing prescribed forms used in the services of a church: as, the formulary of the Church of England is the Book of Common Prayer.

A formulary is a list of approved or preferred prescription drugs compiled by insurance plans that – in theory, at least – are supposed to drive down overall costs for the insurer while still providing adequate treatment for patients.

A formulary is a list of approved or preferred prescription drugs compiled by insurance plans that–in theory, at least–are supposed to drive down overall costs for the insurer while still providing adequate treatment for patients.

Just because a drug is on what's called the formulary at the beginning of the year doesn't mean it even stays on the plan for all of the year, or that it's even on the plan the next year, or even that the plan that you signed up for the first year is even available.

From a 1994 Journal of the American Medical Association article examining physician formulary requests (the formulary is the list of drugs carried by the hospital), we learn that physicians who made specific requests had nearly 20 times the odds of having a financial relationship with the maker of the drug than other physicians.